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University of Bradford >> Library >> Electronic Resources >> Quality in Information Resources: Life Sciences
Traditional forms of information resource, such as books and journals, always go through a systems of evaluation before you see them.
Books are edited before publication.
Journals are edited and also 'peer-reviewed' - checked by experts in the field. Consequently, especially in scientific research, they are regarded as the highest quality form of information.
In contrast, almost anyone can produce a Web page and put it onto the Web, so how do you know whether the information is valid?
These provide catalogues of Web sites, carefully assessed by subject specialists. They will usually provide a much smaller number of results than Google, but you can be sure that all the sites are free from bias, regularly updated and at a suitable academic level for higher education.
The Resource Discovery Network is a collection of guides to quality-assessed Internet resources, provided specifically for UK higher education. It includes a specialised life science search engine:
The quality-assessed search guides are most useful for browsing and for general searches. Google and other search engines are best for specific searches.
Yahoo is somewhere in the middle. Some checking is done but appearance on Yahoo is not a guarantee of academic quality!
Use Google or another good search engine, but look critically at Web pages
Is it produced by a company, an organisation, a single individual?
A good Web site should indicate 'ownership' on every page, but, if it doesn't, you may find some hints in the URL
Companies may want to sell you something and you should take this into account when you read the page.
Although many fine Web pages are produced by individuals outside the working environment, in general such pages should be treated with caution.
Pressure groups or political parties, for instance, may wish to promote a particular point of view. This does not necessarily mean that the information they provide is incorrect, but you should take it into account.
In many cases, the country of origin is irrelevant to the usefulness of the information. In some situations, however, it may be important, for instance, if you are looking at the law or government regulations relating to a particular topic. Again, if country of origin is not clearly stated on the Web page, you may get a clue from the URL
Sites in the US have no country indicator in the URL
Not all .com sites are American, however, so beware!
Look at the date, and be careful of undated information - it could be seriously out-of-date. Unfortunately, even highly respectable organisations sometimes leave older pages on the Web!
Particularly in research, scholarship builds on previous work. Look for up-to-date, relevant, appropriate references, including books and journals.
'Sponsored links' are found in most search engines. Organisations pay to be included at the top of a results list.
Sponsored links have their uses, but in general, for academic work, they can usually be ignored.
In Google, sponsored links appear against a coloured background and all good search engines make them easily identifiable.
Many journals are now available via the Web and you will occasionally find journal articles in Google searches. If you need journal articles, however, you will find that databases are a more reliable source.
For further help and information about assessing information quality please contact Anne Costigan (a.t.costigan@bradford.ac.uk)